


Voluble Discourse

by Lilliburlero



Series: Consistently Homesick [5]
Category: King Rat - James Clavell, The Charioteer - Mary Renault, The Marlows - Antonia Forest, White Feathers - Susan Lanigan
Genre: Crossover, Epistolary, Gen, Post-Canon, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-09-19
Packaged: 2018-02-17 22:33:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some correspondence and a journal entry, following the events of<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/2260041"> this story.</a></p><p>*</p><p>Content advisory: misogynistic language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Voluble Discourse

**Author's Note:**

> The title quotes W.H. Auden's poem 'In Praise of Limestone'.

  
88a Kent Rd, So'ton 

23rd March 

My dear Lanyon,

I was surprised yesterday afternoon by a call from Nicola Marlow, with whom I had a fascinating conversation about, among other things, concepts of legal causation. When you’ve a moment, do write and let me know just what the  fuck you think you're playing at. 

Yours ever,

Robert Anquetil

* * *

Stable Cottage,   
nr Centaury Marshall,  
Dorset 

  
25.iii.52

My dear Robbie,

Thanks for yours of the 23rd. Invigorating. May I say ‘just like old times?’ I assume you meant it. I don’t know how much Nicola told you, so excuse repetition. 

I take it she's mentioned how I came to know her in the first place. Anyway, it all happened at the Merricks’ Twelfth Night party. Her sister’s stepchild had wandered off, and Nicola was searching for the brat when she overheard part of a conversation. It was about you. I’d have let it drop, except that one of the men I was talking to was her eldest brother Giles. (The others were Laurie, of course, and Ronnie Merrick. Do you know Ronnie? If you do it will explain a lot but it’s perhaps best if you don’t.) Giles Marlow is callow and self-regarding, to my mind, but naturally Nicola looks up to him and they are quite close. I thought—I now believe I was wrong—she might ask him what we had been talking about, and get told a lot of filthy nonsense. I couldn't bear the idea of that. So I spoke to her, meaning only to find out how much she had heard, and discovered how she knew  you. I said she wasn't to call again, and the reaction I got confirmed I was right to put a stop to it. She’s a nice kid. I didn’t like to do it.

She wrote to me just over a fortnight ago asking for your address. I felt I owed her that much, and that you might actually like to get a letter from her. Nothing I’d seen of her suggested the impulsive streak. I reckoned she was an unusually level-headed little thing. It seems I misjudged her capacity to take it all in, for which my sincere apologies.

I hope you are well, my dear. My contract here is up in May. Laurie wants to go abroad. Shall we see you before then? I’d like it very much if we did. My love to Lucia—I think often of her singing Purcell for us.

Much love,

Ralph

* * *

88a Kent Rd, So'ton

27th March

My dear Ralph,

Thanks for yours of the 25th. You’re a bloody fool. It was wretchedly humiliating, and though you might imagine I'm thoroughly inured to humiliation, in fact it's curiously dependent on circumstance. I don’t see any point in jawing you for it, though, and I suppose no real harm was done, except to my pride, which is a fairly nugatory commodity these days. Nicola is indeed a nice kid, which is why I still can’t imagine what possessed you to tell her about me. Well, I  can, and you should ease off it. 

Who  doesn’t know the Guards' Bike? (If the Marlow looks obtain across the board I can quite imagine what went on. I just don't want to.) I didn’t know about the connection to the MP. What gruesome company you keep. 

Speaking of, I could visit at Easter. Should L. hate it, though?

Lucia sends hers and the observation that you are, like me and all our sex, nyaamps. (But you know that.)

Best love,

Robbie 

* * *

29.iii.52: R.A. wrote back, laying on rather. It had the expected effect, wh/ I relieved in the expected manner, felt fairly cheap after. He offered to come at Easter, dammit, when Spud’s staying w/ his people. Better put him off, b/cI find myself so very much wanting it. Market Saturday in Colebridge. Rowan Marlow cut me. xt, thought we’d settled that. Stupid bitch. It’s as if she  wants people to think the worst.  

* * *

Trennels, 28th March

Dear Mr Anquetil, 

Thank you for letting me write to you, especially after I behaved so badly in turning up without letting you know first. It means a lot to me that you should. As you can see from the address, I got my comeuppance. Miss Craven met Miss Dakers in Wade with her arm in a sling and when I got back she was waiting for me. It wasn't in the least blood for breakfast, but rather a lot of very chilly silence and I spent the night in the San. And then on Sunday afternoon, a long interrogation by Miss Keith. I wish I knew as much as you do about how people are questioned. 

I was doing all right for a while, and I really thought I might get off with a temporary suspension or something. Then I let slip a pronoun (I had been saying ‘they’, which Miss Kempe loathes, but Jane Austen does it, so I can’t see it’s so bad), and it was all up. In a way it was a relief, because although she kept on at me for names and places, which of course I didn’t tell her, I knew that I was certain to be expelled, and there was nothing much more she could threaten me with then. It was a funny feeling like being on the other side of glass, or floating in a bubble.  It seemed to go on for ages.

Eventually, Miss Keith telephoned my mother. My father’s at sea, he doesn’t know yet. Mum came to pick me up on Monday. The worst bit was not being able to say goodbye to people before I left. Rowan has given Mum the impression it's to do with something else entirely, which happened the Christmas  before last, when she (Mum) was with Grandmother in Paris. But she (Rowan) thinks it is Mr Lanyon I went to meet, because she doesn’t know about you and obviously I can’t tell her. It is all a frantic mess. It would be funny if it weren't happening to me. I don't know if I'm looking forward to Ginty and Lawrie coming home for Easter or not: I daresay I've given them a fairly torrid time at school. Staff do persist in assuming you're your sister's keeper.

I know you will think me a complete fool, and I am. I don’t know how I feel about it all yet.  In shock, poor dear is what our cook-daily says, rather relishingly, about people at funerals. I don’t think that’s quite it, though. Anyway, I will finish here. Sorry, this is a very dull letter. I hope to write you more interesting ones in future, if I can work out a way to post it without being nabbed.

Yours,

Nicola Marlow

* * *

 88a Kent Rd, So’ton

30th March

My dear Ralph,

Excuse me for writing out of turn. Of course, I spoke too soon. Nicola wrote: she has been expelled for her adventures. (Nice work, Cdr.) So far she seems to be sticking to name, rank and serial number. I don’t expect that to last, so I thought I’d let you know if you didn’t already. She thinks that her sister Rowan suspects her of an assignation with  you.  Qu’est ce que tu fais dans cette galère? I’m not sure whether I’m aghast or hilarious at all the irony, but Easter is obviously off. Pity, I’d been letting myself look forward to it.

Best love,

Robbie

* * *

Stable Cottage,  
nr Centaury Marshall  
Dorset

2.iv.52

My dear Robbie,

Thanks for yours of the 31st. Explains a few things. Spud is being very forbearing, but May can’t come soon enough. Sorry we shan’t see you down here. It mightn’t have been the most convenient time anyway. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t come to Southampton and treat you to dinner if you’d like. Would Lucia mind the man who wept for her Dido dossing on her lino?

As it happens I have something to discuss with you. A friend of mine can fix you up. Believe it or not, he's called Marlowe. Long hours, low pay, scant chance of success and none of fame, an intolerable deal of sea. ~~I'd go myself, but for~~ In short, right up your alley.  Marlowe was in Changi, poor swine. He's a bit unbalanced.  But if any man on earth could take him on, it would be you. Please let's talk about it.

Much love,

Ralph 

**Author's Note:**

> This doesn't quite deliver on the promise of a less choppy anchorage for Robert extended [here](http://archiveofourown.org/comments/15324444), but there's some cause for optimism, I think.
> 
> The Purcell aria which Lucia sings is [(natch)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOIAi2XwuWo).


End file.
